An Amiable Charlatan Part 4

To my surprise there were no locked doors or burly doorkeepers. We hung up our things in the hall and pa.s.sed into a long room, in which were some fifteen or twenty people. Most of them were sitting round a _chemin de fer_ table; a few were standing at the sideboard eating sandwiches. A dark-haired, dark-eyed, sallow-faced man, a trifle corpulent, undeniably Semitic, who seemed to be in charge of the place, came up and shook hands with Mr. Parker.

"Glad to see you, sir--and your daughter," he said, glancing keenly at them both and then at me. "This gentleman is a friend of yours?"

"Certainly," Mr. Parker replied. "I won't introduce you, but I'll answer for him."

"You would like to play?"

"I will play, certainly," Mr. Parker answered cheerfully. "My friend will watch--for the present, at any rate."

He waved us away, himself taking a seat at the table. I led Eve to a divan at the farther corner of the room. We sat there and watched the people.

There were many whose faces I knew--a sprinkling of stock-brokers, one or two actresses, and half a dozen or so men about town of a dubious type. On the whole the company was scarcely reputable. I looked at Eve and sighed.

"Well, what is it?" she asked.

"This is no sort of place for you, you know," I ventured.

"Here it comes," she laughed; "the real, hidebound, respectable Englishman! I tell you I like it. I like the life; I like the light and shade of it all. I should hate your stiff English country houses, your highly moral amus.e.m.e.nts, and your dull day-by-day life. Look at those people's faces as they bend over the table!"

"Well, I am looking at them," I told her. "I see nothing but greed. I see no face that has not already lost a great part of its attractiveness."

"Perhaps!" she replied indifferently. "I will grant you that greed is the keynote of this place; yet even that has its interesting side. Where else do you see it so developed? Where else could you see the same emotion actuating a number of very different people in an altogether different manner?"

"For an adventuress," I remarked, "you seem to notice things."

"No one in the world, except those who live by adventures, ever has any inducement to notice things," she retorted. "That is why amateurs are such failures. One never does anything so well as when one does it for one's living."

"The question is arguable," I submitted.

She shrugged her shoulders.

"Every question is arguable if it is worth while," she agreed carelessly.

"Look at all those people coming in!"

"I don't understand it," I confessed. "These places are against the law, yet there seems to be no concealment at all! Why aren't we raided?"

"Raids in this part of London only take place by arrangement," she a.s.sured me. "This place will reach its due date sometime, but every one will know all about it beforehand. They are making a clear profit here of about four hundred pounds a night and it has been running for two months now. When the raid comes Mr. Rubenstein--I think that is his name--can pay his five- hundred-pound fine and move on somewhere else. It's wicked--the money they make here some nights!"

"You seem to know a good deal about it," I remarked.

"The place interests father," she told me. "He comes here often."

"And you?"

"Sometimes. I am not always in the humor."

I looked at her long and thoughtfully. Her beauty was entirely the beauty of a young girl. There were no signs of late hours or anxiety in her face.

She puzzled me more than ever.

"I wish I knew," I said, "exactly what you mean when you call yourself an adventuress."

She laughed.

"It means this," she explained: "To-night I have money in my purse, jewels on my fingers, a motor car to ride home in. In a week's time, if things went badly with us, I might have nothing. Then father or I, or both of us, would go out into the world to replenish, and from whomever had most of what we desired we should take as opportunity presented itself."

"Irrespective of the law?"

"Absolutely!"

"Irrespective of your sense of right and wrong?"

"My sense of right and wrong, according to your standards, does not exist."

I gave it up. She seemed thoroughly in earnest, and yet every word she spoke seemed contrary to my instinctive judgment of her. She pointed to the table.

"Look!" she whispered. "These people don't seem as though they had all that money to gamble with, do they? Look! There must be at least a thousand or fifteen hundred pounds upon the table."

It was just as she said these words that the thing happened. From somewhere among the little crowd of people gathered round the table there came the sound of heavy stamping on the floor, and in less than a moment every light in the room went out. The place was in somber darkness. Then, breaking the momentary silence, there came from outside a shrill whistle.

Again there was a silence--and then pandemonium! In a dozen different keys one heard the same shout:

"The police!"

Eve gripped my arm. My matchbox was out in a moment and I struck a match, holding it high over my head. As it burned a queer little halo of light seemed thrown over the table. The door was wide open and blocked with people rushing out. The banker was still sitting in his place. At first I seemed to have the idea that Mr. Parker was by his side. Then, to my astonishment, I saw him at the opposite end of the table, standing as though he had appeared from nowhere. A stentorian voice was heard from outside:

"Ladies and gentlemen, if you please! Nothing has happened. The lights will be on again immediately."

Almost as he spoke the place was flooded with light.

The faces of the people were ghastly. A babel of voices arose.

"Where are the police?"

"Where are they?"

"Who said the police?"

The little dark gentleman whose name was Rubenstein stood upon a chair.

"Ladies and gentlemen," he called out, "nothing whatever has happened-- nothing! The electric lights went out owing to an accident, which I will investigate. It seems to have been a practical joke on the part of the lift man, who has disappeared. There are no police here. Please take your places. The game will proceed."

They came back a little reluctantly, as though still afraid. Then suddenly the banker's hoa.r.s.e voice rang out through the room. All the time he had been sitting like an automaton. Now he was on his feet, swaying backward and forward, his eyes almost starting from his head.

"Lock the doors! The bank has been robbed! The notes have gone! Mr.

Rubenstein, don't let any one go out! I tell you there was two thousand pounds upon the table. Some one has the notes!"

There was a little murmur of voices and a shriek from one of the women as she clutched her handbag. Mr. Parker, bland and benign, rose to his feet.

"My own stake has disappeared," he declared; "and the pile of notes I distinctly saw in front of the banker has gone. I fear, Mr. Rubenstein, there is a thief among us."

Mr. Rubenstein, white as a sheet, was standing at the door. He locked it and put the key in his pocket.